Coaches & Officials Meeting
My Association is planning on holding a preseason coaches & officials forum.
It has been many years since a meeting like this has been held in my area where the coaches and officials are in one room. Have any of you participated in such a forum? What topics would you suggest be covered? Thanks! |
Be sure to cover the new rule change for coaches. :eek: One technical automatically includes ejection with a two game suspension, 10 free throws plus possession for the other team and a $1000 fine. Make sure you enforce it when the season starts.
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We have had coach's roundtables before where coaches come to a meeting and talk about their expectations or things they like to see official do.
I personally see these as a waste of time. Coaches usually complain about the same things over and over and I feel we learn next to nothing. But some feel they are good. Peace |
Communication
I've sat in on a couple of these, but agree with Rut.
Coordinators tell us the same thing every year - coaches want us to be able to communicate with them. They want to be 'heard.' Is communication vital? Of course. But as far as your roundtable goes, I think an overview of POE's, rule changes, and a Q&A with coaches would cover the basics. |
If you want an effective and meaningful interaction with the coaches, invite a local college coach (the higher the level, the better) to come speak to entire group.
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It's A Back Slapping Club ...
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The two invitees were state champions several times over, who always got along well with almost all officials (most of the great coaches do), seldom showing any unsporting behavior. I would love to get a few 5W-15L coaches in a room (with the door locked) and have them explain to us, for the hundredth time (but this time with no technical fouls) how bad officials making bad calls cause them to not make the state tournament each season. Now that would be interesting. |
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I just do not get why we do not take the time get officials better with information that actually helps them. Taking with coaches is nice, but is repetitive and useless in the long run. It is like us talking about ratings when we no only do not control them, there is not much we can do to change them for the most part.
Peace |
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The week before a D1 head coach spoke to us for almost an hour and 90% of it was about official/coach communication. So apparently, it is not something that is known to all officials, nor is there is a perception that officials as a whole are doing a good job of it. |
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For example, our Head Clinician for the IHSA is also a former D1 official and current NAIA supervisor of one of the top leagues in the country. We have a staff meeting that involves both the coaches and the officials that work for the league. Last year there was a coach that tried to make an issue (I cannot remember the specific issue) in that meeting about something an official said to him about a rule. Well, that coach is known by the officials and the supervisor to be a big jerk and our supervisor handled it very well. But when we talked afterward it was clear that this coach was being obstinant. So it was clear to not take him seriously. Supervisors know who their coaches are and often have to stand up to them when they get silly. Peace |
The coaches that complain the loudest about officials not communicating are typically the whinier coaches who spend more time officiating the game than coaching (in my experience). There are coaches who want an explanation on every play or who want to spend the whole game talking to us, and when we don't fall into that trap they act like we are poor communicators. There are coaches who think that every time they get a T that it is a consequence of poor communication from the official. So while it's all well and good that communication is important to coaches (and officials), the reality is that our definition of what it means to be a good communicator from an official's standpoint is sometimes (often?) contradictory to what a coach's definition is.
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This
SC Official nailed it:
"the reality is that our definition of what it means to be a good communicator from an official's standpoint is sometimes (often?) contradictory to what a coach's definition is" |
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We can poo-poo this all we want, but at the college level coaches do have influence with supervisors. If a veteran college supervisor (who is also used as a video observer for major conferences) feels it is important, I'm not going to act like I know better. And, as some of you like to do, it doesn't mean a great communicator can be a crappy play-caller. What it means is that a great play-caller is going to suffer if he is a crappy communicator. And a 100% of the time when I hear discussions about veteran big-time officials whom I think are not that good, I find out that official has a great reputation for communicating and running a game. |
The only time I ever thought anything like this was beneficial was at a camp one summer. And it was a round table type discussion with a couple coaches - a D-1 coach, a D-3 coach, and a HS coach (multi-state championships), and then 3 refs who were on staff at the camp. A question would be asked, and then any and all of them could respond. The questions were written down and submitted by campers the day before.
Some of the questions were about communication, etc...but some were about rules and game situations and the conversations got pretty interesting. |
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Peace |
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I am an official who falls into the "good play-caller" category, and I know I can be a hard-a$$ when provoked. What was interesting about the D1 coach was that he acknowledged that he can be a pain-in-the-a$$, but he said he has great respect for those officials who know how to diffuse those situations without turning them ugly. In fact, he said he would rather get a technical foul than have an official say something nasty or unprofessional to him. That hit home for me because I rarely T up coaches, but I often engage in combative conversations with knucklehead coaches. Between what the D3 supervisor and D1 coach shared with us, I am personally dedicating myself to finding new techniques to communicate with hard-to-deal-with coaches. |
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But let's not pretend there aren't officials out there, HS and college, who don't come into games with the attitude that they are not going to have any communication with the coaches, because there are. |
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2) Agree again, but let's also not pretend like there aren't officials out there, HS and college, who spend the majority of the game conversing with coaches, for whatever reasons they may have. I would argue that this is just as detrimental as not communicating at all. There aren't many, if any, absolutes in this business. Everything has a balance that each of us has to find. That's why it's an art. |
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Peace |
Coaches Meeting ...
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Jeff: I could not agree with you more on the general differences between boys'/girls' H.S. basketball coaches and men's college basketball coaches. Women's college basketball coaches is altogether different. Male coaches are like men's college coaches, and female coaches are like boys'/girls' coaches. The thing that I would like all to remember is that what you and I agree on are generalizations. Not all H.S. and female women's college coaches are pains in the tuchus. MTD, Sr. |
I have been part of many of these meetings, where officials are invited or brought into coaches meetings. Pretty standard fair around these parts. IME
* Coaches at these meetings want info re POints of Emphasis and balls and strikes type stuff. * HS coaches do not care and are often put off if we want to talk about protocol or fashion police type items. They want us in the room to find out or ask questions about how game will be called. They see the rest as officials issues or. Administrative stuff that is not their domain. * Meetings go better when speaking officials gives 2-3 clear points and explanations and ask for questions re those points. Long sit and get type sessions or open forums can become problematic. |
A quick follow up..We had this meeting the other day and the coaches were focused on the new "Conduct/Behavior Warning" and the rules and POE. Not much about complaining:)
One coach asked a question I would like to get your feedback on: As officials, what are 3 traits in coaches that you respect? |
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Well, we had a "kind of" coaches meeting at one of my associations on Tuesday. The problem is only one longtime coach who belongs to the officiating association show up. Every other coach that was asked canceled for some reason.
The best part was this particular coach was a long time head coach and AD and now an assistant coach after retiring from his last head coaching position. He is a great guy and gets it and is also the Executive Director of the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association. So he has a perspective of the entire game. He gave some great incite and unfortunately for him was the only voice, but was beneficial to us. But this was a rare situation. Usually, the coaches have a bitch session about what officials do not do right or have expectations of what we should do that is not realistic (like communicating with us during games). Peace |
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